His features are lean but soft. He isn't overweight, but he doesn't do much and as a consequence his flesh is pale and flaccid. The drugs he uses for recreation and sometimes for work are mid-grade, bought from a storefront three blocks from his apartment and designed to produce maximum effect at minimal cost. These same drugs sap his energy to get out and do things, and as a consequence it is only his mind that gets any exercise. In the mental gymnasium provided by the net he roams free and long, hurling javelins of code at fat targets and scoring bull's-eyes more often than not. No one in his price range can match him. He could ask for more money, but he'd work less frequently, and work is everything to him. It is the only yardstick that bears any meaning for him. Personal relationships lost their importance some time ago. He has no friends, only contacts. He has his chip contact, his software contact, his drug contact, his black market contact. These are the people who matter in his life; without them, he couldn't get the work done.

His name is Michael Travers, but on the e-streets of the net and the mean streets of Chicago he goes by Hand. It's a joke, of sorts, though few ever get it. He lives with the perpetual, bemused hope that when he finishes a contract for a client and the victims realize what has happened they mutter darkly that it was a Hand job, and a good one at that. It is a hope that, unknown to him, has never brought forth fruit. Hand is good, but in the grand scheme of things he's just one more net jockey on the infobahn.

His latest employer hasn't yet revealed his identity. The private flit in which Hand stares at his own reflection is taking him to a meeting where he'll learn his new assignment and, maybe, learn who he's working for. Such matters are up to the discretion of the client. Some don't mind telling their hired help whose stick the bucks come from; others prefer to keep their distance and keep it all on the Q-T. It's all the same to Hand. He's got money in the bank, a slicked-up custom console, all the drugs he could want (at least for this week), and a reputation that keeps all of the above flowing like Stim from a tap.

The flit cruises silently. Below, this section of the city is a war zone. The streets are full of rioters. They would be looters, but there's nothing to loot in this neighborhood. The buildings sit, empty shells and crumbling piles of brick and mortar. The last big riots five years ago in 2034 took care of this neighborhood and then some. Then it was the blacks; today it's the koreans. No one gets their fair share anymore, and everyone knows it. Some just get worked up about it from time to time and have to let off some steam.

As the flit slides on through the air, a man in the crowd below looks down in shock at the blade in his gut. A woman carrying a taser turns and sees the wounded man and, without hesitation, stuns him into unconsciousness before slitting his throat. The weak are wounded; the wounded are killed. On this one topic everyone present is in agreement. Above it all, metaphorically as well as physically, Hand's focus on his own image is lost while he briefly contemplates the crowd below. What the fuck now is the entirety of his reaction before he turns away from the window and asks the rep for a stim.

The drink is fizzy and sweet. Its amphetamine jolt is almost secondary to its flavor. A natural successor to soda, stim raises the ante and escalates the conflict between responsibility and recreation. It tastes good, it's okay to drink in any situation, and it gives you half the rush of straight amphetamines with just one calorie and a snappy ad campaign. It's not addictive, at least not moreso than any other recreational food. In a nation hooked on MSG and getting it in 65% of their meals, a little slice of uppers in one's drink is nothing to stop having fun over. Stim is it.

Hand takes a long swallow and grins. At the other end of this flight waits bucks and work, not necessarily in order of importance.

He's alone in the flit except for the pilot and the rep; fully loaded, the flit would hold thirty. The rep is a big exsov who said his name was Syzygy. It could, perhaps, matter less to Hand what the guy's name is but to do so this particular piece of information would have to do battle with the protein content of the mucus in Hand's nose. The flit is unmarked on the outside, and there's a distinct lack of corporate logos inside. Hand guesses this will be an anonymous job, where some third-rate character actor of an employer will meet him in a darkened room under ridiculous precautions and try to sound menacing while paying Hand to dig up financial dirt on his business partner or something similarly petty. The big folks don't give a damn if you know who they are, because they can afford to--you know as well as they do that if you mis-used that knowledge your ass would be grass. It's only the little boys and the middle managers that go in for cloak-and-dagger vaudeville.

The flit lands somewhere outside the heart of the city, the riot left behind and forgotten like a Wall Drug billboard twenty miles back. The big rep gets up, his haircut a leftover from the KGB. He nods to Hand, then opens the hatch in the side of the flit.

The shit hits the fan. Three sharp explosions pierce the sound of the flit's engines winding down and the rep takes a step backwards; he's hit. Hand's eyes go big. The rep's right hand snaps up on instinct and the implant gun in his arm barks back at whoever's outside. The rep fires six spastic shots through the door as he drops to his knees, and then falls forward out of the flit. Hand crouches down behind the seat and takes a gulp of stim. He decides to plead ignorance if he gets a chance to open his mouth, and for once it'll be an honest plea.

Footsteps. Someone enters the flit. Then another someone. A brief exchange of gunfire in the front of the craft; the pilot just got hers. Hand huddles, in the faint and desperate hope he won't be found. In the private net that is his mind he runs down the list of people he might have pissed off who would pull something like this; it rattles him when he realizes the list is pretty damn long and he can't possibly formulate a response strategy for every one.

"Mr. Travers." The accent is East coast. Bronx. Brooklyn. One of those stupid places he's never been to in the only city worth mentioning out that way. Hand looks up into the face of a smiling man with slicked-back hair, holding a gun. "Mr. Travers, please get up. You gotta have a little conversation with an associate of mine." Hand stands slowly, deliberately, not wanting to give this guy an excuse to shoot. This chain of events is not standard operating procedure.

Hand steps out into the aisle as the man steps back to give him room. The gun never wavers. The two men move towards the open doorway out of the flit, cautiously. Each is aware that should things go awry one of them will probably die, and this is sufficient to warrant excessive caution on both of their parts. They maneuver out and down through the hatch, stepping over the body of Syzygy but stepping fully into the growing pool of blood spreading from underneath his corpse.

Outside, Hand squints into the light. There are half a dozen gunsels like his companion here, and almost as many corpses. Something serious has obviously gone down, and the parameters of the situation have been radically altered. Hand wonders briefly if he'll still get paid for this mess, by his original employer or anyone else. The passing thought that he could die has moved on, replaced by his implacable ego and his somewhat unwarranted confidence that his skills are too valuable, regardless of the situation, for him to simply be killed. The man with the gun motions him through the line of heavy hitters and they enter a door off the landing pad of the skyscraper they stand atop. He and Hand then move into an elevator and ride down several floors. Hand is tempted to say something witty but thinks better of it, and the ride passes by in silence.

The elevator opens, and the men exit. They walk down a hall and into an unmarked door.

"Welcome, Mr. Travers. Fuck the further pleasantries." The woman speaking is short and squat, and stands a head below Hand. She looks like a caged tiger, a fierce light burning in her eyes and giving lie to the laxity of her ample form. She takes a step forward and shakes his hand. "My name is irrelevant. Your only concern is the terminal in the next room. There you will jack in, and learn for me why you were brought here."

"Whoa...look, I ain't got clue one, lady. I got word that someone wanted to hire my services, so I made contact and they arranged to pick me up. We get here, your boys ace the rep and the pilot and here I am. I don't even know whose men you've killed, let alone what I was being hired for."

"Your prospective employer was Harry Lexington, president of Lexington Manufacturing. They make industrial robots for the aircraft construction industry, and twenty-four hours ago were bought out by another corporation. I represent a third party with a substantial interest in how the buy-out goes. I believe Mr. Lexington was bringing you here to dig up something that would sabotage the buy-out, and I want to know what that something was. If you could have found it, someone else still can, and it is in my employer's best interest to learn just what information could damage the buy-out and get control of said information. Is this clear?"

Hand takes a breath and goes into attitude overdrive. "Clear as flat stim, friend. I came here to earn some bucks and do some work. If you want me to go poking around I expect to be paid for my time. I could just as easily jack in and hose the lot of you and the buy-out to boot as help you. What'll you offer to make it worth the effort of actually doing the job, instead of just fucking you over?"

The woman looks away for a moment. "We've killed eight people to prevent your employment by Lexington Manufacturing. We can make it nine, if you like, and accomplish that very goal."

"Nix, babe. You would've aced me on the flit if that were the case. For some reason you think I'm the man for the job. Well, here I am. I'll work for you as soon as for Lexington, but I expect to be paid for my work. I'm worth it, after all." He speaks with the confident air of a man with a hard-on and a place to put it.

Hand's response is greeted with a level stare. "Forty-k. And you start earning that right now, in this office, on the equipment present. Time is absolutely of the essence. Harry Lexington doesn't yet know that his subordinates are experiencing post-mortem relaxation of the bowels and I want to be done and out of here before their shit starts to stink."

Hand considers this for a brief moment. "Deal. Where do I jack in?"

Step one: connect to his deck at home and do a quick transfer of his tools. Code in hand and installed, he feels confident. The console he's on is lame compared to his set-up at home, but at least he's got the software to do the job.

Step two: check out the files of the system he's on. He looks for certain key items--references to himself; references to the flight; references to the buy-out; references to competitors and investors. His search algorithm is tight and quick, and the defenses of the system at hand melt like margarine. In short order he finds the instructions for the Lexington gunsels who are lying dead on the roof. Nothing special, just a manpower requisition asked for by Harry Lexington's personal assistant Syzygy Eisenstein. Sidestep to a profile on Lexington Manufacturing. He digests the information in seconds as it hits his brain and becomes part of his store of knowledge, as readily accessible as the year Columbus sailed to the new world and just as intuitive. It's a flyspeck, four dozen employees, gross revenues of a few million bucks. They lease office space in the building he's standing in but it's just their meet-the-public face; real work gets done in offices at their plant. What's the big deal? His own name crops up in a memo sent to Harry L. eighteen hours ago, mentioning him as a possibility for "some work." The buy-out is the topic of much internal discussion but little relevance to Hand's current situation. His search for investors and competitors spiels off a list of inconsequentials.

Step three: find out who he's working for. The buy-out is from DemonDial Systems, a software firm specializing in molecular manipulation. They seem above-board. The board of directors launched a program of expansion and diversification two years ago and Lexington Manufacturing is just one more in a string of buy-outs chosen to strengthen DDS' portfolio. Yawn. So who does the fat broad represent? Cross-reference investors/competitors of both DDS and Lexington. Six matches of note. Track them down. A clumsy intrusion into Lexington's systems twelve hours ago, the same system Hand is now penetrating. Trace it back. Low-rent work, done by a staffer at Trident Security--his new employer, and an investor in both companies. The fat broad is Nancy Molinsky, chief of internal operations at Trident, a company half the size of Lexington. Something weird there; they've spilled the blood of someone bigger than them over a minor buy-out. What's the story?

Ninety-four seconds have passed.

Step four: motive. What does either Lexington or DDS do that would interest Trident, a supplier of internal office security systems to the feds and various other customers? Hand spends two minutes penetrating the security walls of Trident. It's the toughest two minutes he's spent in three years, but he's as good as he believes, and gets his answer. Trident actually makes four times as much bucks as they say. The extra dough comes from selling the secrets of the systems they install to a variety of shady operators. They install the security for a company or for a government agency, then sell the secrets needed to beat it to someone else. Trident makes money coming and going; when a break-in actually gets detected, the customer complains and Trident charges them big bucks to upgrade security--leaving yet another back door for their under-the-table clients to slip in through next time. It's a sweet scam, and the sweetest bit is that 80% of their back-door dealing is with customers who want to go through Uncle Sam's pants pockets. Of all the bureaucracies Trident deals with, the U.S. government scores high marks on three counts: reliance on Trident systems, ease of covert entry, and desirability of contents. The funds for these illicit services get channeled out of Trident entirely and into a black hole where, no doubt, the chief officers of Trident maintain triple-blind bank accounts. Trident supplies security to Lexington and DDS as a fringe benefit of being a sizable stockholder in both; odds are Lexington has just caught onto them in some fashion and hopes to cut them out of the buy-out entirely, and cut Trident off at the knees while they're at it by turning them in to the feds. Now there, thought Hand, is a secret worth killing for.

Step five: cover your ass. He's found what he'd been hired for--the reason Lexington wanted his services was to dig up the dirt on Trident he'd just found so Lexington could do a hose job on them. The problem was, this is sensitive stuff. How can he be sure Molinksy wouldn't just ace him when he jacks out and gives her the scoop? It takes Hand another forty seconds to find the answer.

"The oldest sort. Your CEO at Trident has been keeping his mistresses on the payroll, in a big way--two hundred-k for last year alone, plus gifts totaling another fifty-k apiece. The old boy's spending big money to get off, big money that should have been going to shareholders. Not a good thing."

"And the point is?"

"The point is, Lexington wanted proof. Financial statements, payroll receipts, take your pick. Our man Harry wants to blackmail your boss into selling him Trident's stock in both Lexington and DDS for forty cents on the dollar, so he can swing a bigger slice at the bargaining table for himself."

"You have proof of this?"

"Of course. I've dropped copies of the relevant files with pointers to the source into your account at Trident. I've also added some locks to those same files that'll keep any Lexington hacks shut out long enough for the buy-out to go through. Past that, it's not my problem."

Molinsky sits down at the terminal and accesses her account while her armed New Yorker keeps an eye on Hand. She checks over the files for several minutes.

Then she stands up. "Alright. You've done what I asked. I'll credit your account forty-k now, and you, Mr. Travers, will be flown home."

Hand again regards his image in the window of the flit as the craft makes its way back into the heart of Chicago. He figures he's got a day before Molinsky or her superiors deal with the situation sufficiently to realize that the files were complete fakes cobbled together in the time it takes to blink an eye. By then--long before then, in fact--Hand will have turned over all the relevant data on Trident's shady dealings to the feds. He figures he has the time. Molinsky, he knows, was ready to kill him if he had emerged babbling about Trident's secret customers. His ruse should be solid enough to keep him alive just long enough to get some heavy protection from Uncle Sam. And of course he keeps the forty big bucks.

Below, the riot has wound down although the flames are still going. Chicago rests stolid and still, a sky of stars burning brightly in high-rise buildings and flaming ruins reflecting the sky of stars above. The flit drifts on through the canyons of buildings, jockeying for a clear route through the myriad of other craft that clog the air above and among the city. Everyone has a mission of some sort this evening. There are a million deals to be dealt, a million lives to be lived. Hand is one of these lives, a small one when the big picture is taken in. But it's enough for him.

Hand sips on a stim and thinks about the toke waiting for him back at his flat. Another night, another job, another hit, one more day in the string of unbroken periods that comprise his waking existence. At some point, perhaps all of this will acquire meaning and context. For now, he simply is and that is enough. More than that and it hurts his head to think. Instinct is king.